Sir Billy Connolly has said he would like to die in his homeland by the shores of Loch Lomond.

The comedian, who moved from New York to Florida two years ago, said he longed to return to the Scottish loch where he played as a child during his time in the Cub Scouts.

In footage from his new programme, Billy Connolly’s Ultimate World Tour, the actor and presenter reminisces about his childhood from his Florida home and quotes from Sir Walter Scott poem Breathes There The Man.

He said: “I remember standing by the shores of Loch Lomond, Inversnaid, and the sky was beautiful. 

“I remember that line, I forget whose line it is: ‘Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, who never to himself hath said, this is my own, my native land.’

“I don’t like to look like a bagpiper with heather in my ears, but sometimes your love for the place just has to find a stage. 

“I’d like to die there. It’s a weird subject to bring up. 

“I wouldn’t like to stay away forever. I’d like to be planted there eventually, in Loch Lomond.”

In 2013, Sir Billy, who is married to his second wife, comedian and psychologist Pamela Stephenson, revealed he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s and prostate cancer on the same day. 

He has since been given the all-clear for cancer and has moved to Florida to fight the degenerative disorder.

The programme, broadcast on ITV and called Ultimate World Tour, follows the Big Yin, now 76, through his newly-adopted home state while looking back at his travels from the last 25 years, from Scotland to Canada and Australia.

In a clip from the series, he is seen driving round the banks of Loch Lomond and looking back on his time as a Cub Scout when he visited the beauty spot.
During his journey explained to viewers: “The parts of Scotland I’m going to take you to are some of the most breathtaking places in the world.”

He reveals that travelling across the globe has led him to love his origins and the city of Glasgow where he grew up and forged a career as a comedian and performer in the city’s folk clubs.

A former member of the folk group The Humblebums, where he played alongside Gerry Rafferty of Baker Street fame, the Anderston-born Sir Billy also spoke of his love for touring and visiting new places. 

He said: “The on-the-road thing was always important to me. 

“It gives you a certain love of the world and has taught me to love where I come from.

“We came here when I was a cub, I was in the 141 pack in Glasgow and it gave me a love of the countryside that has never ever left me.”

The Ultimate Tour series is presented in a similar way to other travel documentaries the comedian has made, including journeys to far-flung corners of the globe.

Starting in 1994 with Billy Connelly’s World Tour of Scotland, the format has seen the performer cross Australia, travel through the notorious Northwest Passage to Vancouver Island on the Canadian Pacific coast, and drive from Chicago to St Louis along the famous Route 66. 

This trip saw Sir Billy hospitalised for a week after he crashed at the border near Arizona and New Mexico, resulting in a broken rib and a gash in his knee.

Regarding the new TV series, he said: “It was exactly 25 years ago that I found myself taking the cameras out of the theatres and into the world.

“It’s a journey that’s taken me to far flung places and offered up once-in-a-lifetime experiences and I’m still discovering thrilling new stuff around every corner now I’ve pitched up in Florida.”